Autor: Murray, John

Buch: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Titel: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Stichwort: Der Gottlose der Bibel; Typ 3 - der gottlose Philosoph

Kurzinhalt: In the Book of Wisdom, the Sage describes the man of learning who explores the work of the Creator and fails to find the Creator himself

Textausschnitt: 83a The third type of the godless man in the Bible was the godless philosopher. The Sage of Israel, who wrote in the tradition of Solomon and inherited his name, encountered him in the world of Hellenistic culture, late in the history of Israel. In the Book of Wisdom, the Sage describes the man of learning who explores the work of the Creator and fails to find the Creator himself. Instead he makes idols of the cosmic processes and powers. In so doing, of course, he makes his own learning the supreme idol. The Sage deals with the godless philosophers more gently than with the vulgar masses who bowed before statuettes and figurines. "It may be," he says, "that they but lose the way in the course of a search for God with a will to find him. Absorbed in his works, they strive to fathom them; but they let themselves be caught in outward appearances, so beautiful are the things that come beneath their eyes" (Wisdom 13:6-7). The Greek phrase of the Septuagint is exquisitely turned: kola ta blepomena. It is the eternal excuse that is no excuse. (Fs)

83b These ancient scientists, ancestors of a long lineage today grown vast in number, were bemused and bewitched by the beauties and powers of nature, "fire and wind and the subtile air, the starry vault, the headlong flood, the lamps of heaven-upon these they look as upon gods, the lords of the world" (13:2). It may be, says the Sage, that "a lesser blame attaches to them" (13:6). At least they were engaged in the pursuit of truth; their error was to have idolized the pursuit itself. They do not, however, escape indictment: "In the end, even they are inexcusable. If they had the capacity to amass science enough to scrutinize the universe, how was it that they could not even more quickly discover the Master?" (13:8-9). God is not among the secrets of nature, to be discovered only by the laborious toil of science. He is indeed hidden but only so as to be "not far from any one of us," as Paul, depending on the wisdom of Israel, would later tell the Areopagus (Acts 17:27). Man, who is God's image, cannot fail to find God just below the surface of his works and accessible to ready inference, but man can refuse to recognize him. This is the folly with which the Sage charges the scientists. They are, he says, "utter fools" (13:1). For all their learning, they failed to grasp the first fact evident about the cosmos, that it is not God, that it is not divine, that it is, however, sacral, as the work of God which reveals its Artisan. (Fs)